


A Tall Tale About A Fearsome Critter

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fawnlock, Gen, Taxidermy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5039251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I asked BelladonnaQ what she wanted for her birthday. She said, "Will you write me a Johnlock fic?" I then proceeded to do nothing of the kind, and instead wrote some gen Fawnlock. Better luck next year, Bella!</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tall Tale About A Fearsome Critter

Fawnlock is watching television when an advert comes on for a new American-themed restaurant. Images of hackneyed Americana flash on the screen, in between mouth-watering shots of corn dogs and crab cakes. 

Fawnlock calls out, “John! John!” until John comes into the sitting room and sees Fawnlock pointing at the television. “America!” Fawnlock squawks. 

John catches only the last moment of the advert, but he manages to glean what it is about, and he chuckles. “I know, you want to go to America. But that was just for a restaurant. It’s not the actual place.” 

Still uncomfortable with human speech, Fawnlock instead communicates his desire by dashing towards the coat rack and pulling his big gray hoodie form one of the hooks. Since he shed his antlers, John has allowed Fawnlock to walk around in the city, so long as he wears trousers, shoes, and the hoodie. 

John says, “Let me think about it.” 

Fawnlock makes sure that John thinks about it, by pointing out the advert every time it comes on the telly, and approaching John while holding up the hoodie several more times besides. And so at last, John gives in and takes Fawnlock to the restaurant. 

It is not quite what John is expecting. He had thought that the decor would be Route 66 signs and pictures of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. This place is made up to look like a lodge, with dimly-lit wood paneling covered in sepia-toned photos of men in raccoon hats, and hunting memorabilia. They’ve barely made it in the door before he catches sight of a taxidermied coyote, modeled to look like it is howling at the moon…and Fawnlock has seen it too. John’s heart stops; he sure that Fawnlock will be distressed at the sight of a dead, stuffed wild animal. 

But Fawnlock approaches the coyote with morbid delight. He sniffs it and pokes at it, especially the teeth, until John scolds him. “If they see you touching it, they’ll throw us out,” he warns. Fawnlock understands and nods, but continues to scrutinize the coyote. In the wild, he seldom has the opportunity to get close to a predator. This is a less than ideal situation, what with the animal being dead and all, basically just a skin on a mannequin, but it is better than nothing at all. 

John asks the hostess if they could get a booth in a corner; he knows that Fawnlock is not nearly done doing things out of curiosity that ought to remain unseen by staff and fellow patrons. Where they end up seated, there is another creature mounted on the wall above them: a jackalope. 

Fawnlock looks differently at this animal. At first he sits in the booth like a person should, and examines it from below. But once the hostess has departed, he stands up on the seat and scrutinizes it closely, smelling it and feeling the horns. He looks down at John quizzically, pointing at it. 

The coyote was one thing: Fawnlock might never have been in the presence of one of those, as they were not native to the British Isles, but he’s seen photographs of them in a book John owns, an encyclopedia of animals. In fact, Fawnlock prides himself on knowing about every sort of animal, thanks to nature programs on television and his insistence that John check out books from the library for him about animals from the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. But he has never seen a jackalope at all before, and the idea of explaining one is even more difficult than explaining the coyote would have been. John thinks about the Body Worlds exhibit he saw a few years ago, and imagines the difference between the emotional impact of that exhibit, where human bodies were carefully preserved and displayed with stunning accuracy for the edification of the public, and the impact an exhibit might have had where animal parts were sewn to the human bodies purely for entertainment purposes. John does not think he has the heart to tell Fawnlock the truth about the jackalope. 

“Ah, well, you see,” he says, “the jackalope is native to the, ah, western states. It’s a very rare animal, almost extinct. But I’m sure that this one was killed a long time ago, when people didn’t realize it was wrong.” 

“Dodo,” Fawnlock says. 

“Right, like the dodo. People didn’t understand how awful it was, what they had done to the dodo, until it was too late. So even though that was wrong,” he points at the taxidermy, “it’s been done, and it may be the only chance anyone around here has to see a jackalope, so I reckon we shouldn’t hide it away.” 

Fawnlock listens carefully to this and responds with a contemplative nod. 

That night, long after Fawnlock goes to sleep, John stays up, kept awake by thoughts of the jackalope and Fawnlock’s curiosity about it. He fears that, if Fawnlock does not get some information about it, he will go looking for some and end up discovering the truth, which seems more gruesome to John the more he thinks about it. He does not want Fawnlock to think less of humankind because of the things they do, and whenever the subject had come up in the past, he’d tried to frame human behavior in terms of their quest for knowledge, a pursuit Fawnlock shared and respected. The stuffing and mounting of hunting trophies for purposes of showing off is more difficult to excuse. 

Eventually he hatches a plan, and stays up nearly all night executing it. He gathers some text here and there about the jackrabbits of the American west, finds a few photomanipulations on Google Images of jackalopes “in the wild,” and uses an online template to cobble it together into a Wordpress post. 

After completing it, he sleeps late, and when he wakes up, he finds Fawnlock on the sofa in the sitting room, looking at the pictures of coyotes in his animal encyclopedia. “After you went to sleep last night,” John says, “I found a website about jackalopes. Would you like to see it?” 

Fawnlock closes the book and bounds over to the computer. John shows him the page, and lets Fawnlock scroll down it and see the pictures. As he examines each photo, Fawnlock makes little noises of wonder, and when he is done, he gives John a thank-you hug for finding him the information. 

“Now then,” John says, “how about breakfast?” Fawnlock’s enthusiastic smile says it all, and John goes into the kitchen to fix something. 

Now Fawnlock looks back at the computer. He is happy that John cares so much for him that he would make this fake page about a made-up creature to spare his feelings. He could detect from the first sniff that the jackalope was made of two different animals. It was a strange thing to create, but human behavior is consistently strange. John’s concern for him, however, is very endearing, and it almost makes Fawnlock want to obey John’s wish that he be a bit more “well-behaved,” to please him in return. 

Almost.

 


End file.
